


Finer Than Prayer

by Atropos_lee



Series: Watching [3]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-01
Updated: 2007-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:05:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atropos_lee/pseuds/Atropos_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Countrycide<br/>In the hub on the morning after Torchwood limps home from the Brecon Beacons, Ianto is the last but one to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finer Than Prayer

"So, next time Jumping Jack Flash suggests a nice weekend team building, back me up when I vote for a five star hotel with paintball and a hot tub... hold still - just –one more second." Owen clipped the last stitch on Ianto's scalp, and leaned back to survey his work. "Yup. Still pretty. Ish." He dodged from side to side, trying to judge the pupils that gazed back at him out of bruised and puffy flesh. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Before Ianto, with bitten tongue and still unsure that all his teeth were secure, could answer, Jack walked through the door, head down. Owen flipped his hand to display the two spread fingers to his boss, who didn't crack a smile.

"Ok. Owen. I get the message. You don't like camping."

"Just concerned about my colleague here." Owen stripped off his gloves and threw them onto the tray. "Isn't that what team building is all about, Jack?" His patient's attention had wandered to the door. "Ianto, look at me. Yeah. I'm still worried about concussion – is there anyone at home to look after you? No, well," Owen had the grace to blush just a little at Ianto's scowl "I guess not." 

"Ianto, what time is it?" Jack called over his shoulder as he continued towards the armoury. 

Ianto found he could now reel off the figure without the slightest hesitation. "1.52 pm, sir."

Jack didn't pause. "See Owen, he's not concussed, you can stop fussing. I just dropped Tosh off, Gwen is no doubt enjoying the tender loving care of her boyfriend, and I want you both out of here in the next five minutes."

Owen shook his head, and reached for his jacket, "Well, I'm just a doctor, what would I know. Ianto, my son, the oracle has spoken. Keep the ribs strapped tight, take the pills, don't drive - taxi home - and if you feel drowsy, dizzy or nauseous, call an ambulance. Not me." He strode out of the hub with a wave, the only one of them unmarked by their night in the Beacons. Except Jack, of course. 

The clatter of cage doors locking in Owen's wake faded. Ianto reached into his pocket for his phone, and thumbed through speed dial to "Starline Taxi - Bute Street", but was suddenly too tired to connect the call. He leaned back in the chair, the phone loose in his hand.

This was so terrifyingly familiar and strange. Sitting alone the creak and hum of the empty hub. Late night, early morning, or a Sunday lunchtime, just like this one. For months it meant time pretending he was still half of a couple, although the anticipation of time with Lisa was somehow more rewarding than the reality. Sometimes the suspense was more infinitely terrifying, as he listened for Jack's return, the cogs of the door, the hissing hydraulics of the lift. He'd deflected Jack's inquiries first with an answering smile, then with flirtation, and when that palled, with his best impersonation of a clumsy adolescent seduction, which seemed to utterly disarm his boss. 

Ianto folded his arms on Owen's workstation and rested his head for just a few moments, allowing the sounds to wash over him. For once he was losing the thread of time that now seemed to pulse through him, and he didn't care.

He hadn't been left alone here since. Since Lisa died and Jack stopped smiling at the dumb sweetness of his regard. He and Jack still spent hours alone together, heads bent over a timed exercise, or a file that Ianto certainly doesn't have clearance to see, or some random artefact hauled out of the archive, Jack tossing aside the Torchwood label to add his own, riper description, suggesting a personal familiarity he can not possible have. It all suggested a kind of trust - except that Jack had never since left him alone here, and no longer offered the smiles and words that used to skirt around desire. 

"I thought I told you to go home." He jerked upright, phone slipping from his hand and clattering to the floor. Jack was leaning in the kitchen doorway, mug in hand.

"Just calling a taxi..." Ianto stooped for his mobile, but a wave of dizziness left him propped against the workstation, shivering, while Jack stepped forward, bent and slipped the phone into Ianto's shirt pocket in one fluid movement. Ianto flinched away from the contact, acutely aware of his own filth, shaking goose-pimpled flesh, damp mud-crusted jeans, hair plastered down by blood and worse. 

Jack's face, inches from his, was the same cool mask as the killer of the night before, firing again and again, without hesitation, into the disintegrating flesh and bone around him. Not a tremor, not a grimace. The most single most welcome and horrifying sight of the whole bloody night. Pivoting like a clockwork toy, on an axis of gunmetal. There was still a fine spray of blood across his cheek, but not another mark. Jack Harkness. The Monster. 

Ianto groped for his jacket, twisting away apologetically, but Jack wouldn't step back. Instead he placed the mug on the desk at Ianto's side and leaned in closer, closing his eyes and breathing in, deeply. Ianto, burning with humiliation and shame, fought his instinct to knock Jack away. 

"God, you smell ..." Jack was hanging over his neck, face transformed, "- so alive..." Before Ianto could pull away, Jack had his fingers buried in his hair, cradling the back of his neck, and inhaled. His eyes, when they opened, were huge, unfocussed, black as ink. Ianto was not even sure Jack can still see him. After weeks when they have barely touched, an awkward pat on the back, the brushes of hands exchanging files, how perverse to chose this fetid moment to show interest. He squirmed away, mumbling, "Don't... I reek..."

"I know that smell so well..." Jack pressed against him, scenting the skin on his throat, his hair, his collar, "I used to hang around an airfield ... Every breakfast, in the mess-hall, you see empty seats, count missing faces, but those who come back –" Jack's hand skimmed Ianto's shirt and hip, shaking "you could close your eyes and find them..." he breathed deeply, pushing his forehead against Ianto's, like connoisseur evaluating a complex wine, "...grass, oil, smoke, sweat, blood, piss, fear, relief – and – so full of life, one more day to live, so ready, so hard..." Jack's palm came to rest on Ianto's cock, through stained denim, and, yes, it was hard and ready. Ianto bit his lip and pressed upward into Jack's hand, just as Jack's eyes refocused. He suddenly jerked away, hands spread, "sorry", blood rushing into his cheeks. 

This was the first time Ianto had ever heard Jack lost for words, "I'm sorry..." rapt, out of control. It was exhilarating, terrifying and too good to miss. He snatched Jack's collar and pulled him back towards him, ignoring the creak of his cracked ribs, then turned aside, to bare his throat to Jack's mouth, teeth and tongue.

Jack pushed the shirt from his shoulders, his hands pulling the t-shirt aside, sliding down to his waist, his lips following them, against Ianto's chest, and belly. Jacks long blunt fingers curled hard into Ianto's hips, his cheek, nose and lips were gentle against the bruises, grazing over his ribs and the strapping there, lapping his naval and the fine trail of hair below, feverish through the denim over his cock.

Jack was speaking. Ianto felt rather than heard the words, vibrating on his skin, "I believe … Seeing… feeling… each part and tag … inside and out." They weren't for him – perhaps they were for long dead pilots in whatever war it was that Jack was too young to have fought. 

Ianto made one last attempt to stay unmoved, as if he were elsewhere, not here under Jack's mouth - then twitched, _fuck_ , fumbled his belt and buttons aside and Jack was buried in his groin, eyes closed.. 

And then all was still. And very quiet. 

Ianto was forced to look down and meet Jack's eyes. There was no heat or confusion there. The bastard had rocked back onto his heels, hand still wrapped Ianto's cock, stone stock still except for the merest maddening stirring of one calloused thumb. Waiting for Ianto to make some further disclosure. 

He twisted his fingers into Jack's hair and pulled, but Jack shook his head back, like a dog shedding water. He could feel the roots tearing, but Jack still resisted, teeth clenched, for the word. 

"Yes..." he said, "yes," and "yes."

Down, deeper, endless, deeper than cunt, tongue wrapped around his cock head, the merest hint of teeth to remind him that he is fucking the mouth of a killer. 

Suddenly he was tugging again at Jack's hair, this time in warning, but Jack shook his head in the same curious doglike gesture, tightened his fingers on Ianto's hip, and opened his throat still further to swallow.

_____________

Water ran over the Victorian tiles and swirled down through the drains beneath Torchwood, carrying away grass and mud and dried blood and the fine strands of dark hair Ianto had found knotted around his fingers. Trace evidence. Jack had left nothing more damning behind. In three brisk strokes he had licked Ianto clean as a cat, and tucked him away behind the zip, before he had fully drawn breath. 

Ianto threw back his head under the steaming flow, and scrubbed until his skin red, and the adhesive strapping Owen had so carefully applied to his chest was lank and swollen.

Jack had just looked up at him, not smiling, quite, but with lips full and slick and curved with satisfaction, as if he had learned all Ianto's secrets from taste alone. Ianto fought the absurd urge to stoop and taste for himself whatever knowledge Jack was licking from his lips. Instead he fled, pushing himself unsteadily from the desk, mumbling, "I have to shower," and leaving Jack on his knees at Owen's desk.

He dialled the combination of Owen's locker, and lifted the sweatpants, shirt and fleece stored there. He brought the bundle up to his face, and tentatively breathed in. Shampoo. Fabric conditioner. Aftershave. The scent of Owen's neck and hair. He raised his head and stared at the man opposite him, in the foxed mirror. 

Damp. Bruised. Livid. 

Meat. 

Alive.

His lungs filled convulsively, with the first ragged gulp of a man dragged from drowning. Living was painful. Coming in Jack Harkness's mouth was agony. For the first time the thought "one more day to live" was an exquisite torment instead of a dull ache. Unbearable and inescapable.

He pulled the fleece hurriedly over his head, thrust his feet naked into his trainers, and raced up a level to find Jack. The lights were off. Jack's door was closed. Ianto stood and listened, blood singing through his ears, but echoes of hub the told him that he was alone.

+++

 _I believe in the flesh and the appetites,_  
_Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle._  
_Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,_  
_The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,_  
_This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds._  
From 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman


End file.
